TIGSource: Hakaiman

Hakaiman

Derek Yu — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:49:00 +0000

I had no idea that developer Ikiki is one prolific motherfucker, since all I knew of his work was Nikujin. Check out this page of all this games. Holy hell, this guy is like the Takashi Miike of indie games. And I vow that I shall play them all and review them on this site!

Hakaiman (direct download), the second of his games I’ve played (and considered to be one of his best) is a top-down espionage game. There are six missions in total, that have you stealing the plans, infiltrating the base, etc., with nothing but a machine gun, a handful of grenades, and your gigantic brass balls at your disposal.

Whether you want to go in guns blazing or silently snap necks is up to you, but guards are thankfully quite simple-minded and, unless they see you, will not actively seek you out (and even then, for only a short while). They will also respond to loud noises, like explosions. It’s not very realistic, but it makes the game infinitely more fun and playable.

The lowdown is that this game is really, really sweet, and the many ways you can kill your opponents and yourself make it very replayable. There’s even a high score system that tracks your speed and other factors (types of kills, perhaps?). And unlike Nikujin, which is the gaming equivalent of trying to pick up a glass ball with chopsticks, Hakaiman is totally beatable.

I loved this game so much that I even made a walkthrough for it, with screenshots of every level, before and after the carnage.

(Thanks to raigan and Jon Mak for the link to all his games and for giving me heads-up on this one in particular!)

Controls and hints in the extended.

Controls:

X – Change Weapon (Hands or Gun)

Z – Throw Grenade (hold to prime) or Reload

Shift – Punch/use or fire gun

Ctrl – Hold to strafe

J – Commit suicide (in a giant explosion)

Hints:

Punch a guard from the back or side to snap his neck silently.

Some walls are breakable with grenades.

Turrets can be destroyed if you drop a grenade right under them.

Guards respond to loud noises.

Guards flee from grenades.

On most levels there is a secret item that gives you a 1-up when you complete the level!

"Hakaiman" by Daiz

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:34:53 +0000

Holy crap, I just beat Nikujin without dying in 5min47sec!

God, I feel awesome.

So, now I have completed 1. and 3. of the achievements (plus the one you get from survival) :)

"Hakaiman" by Daiz

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:14:43 +0000

Of course Nikujin is beatable. But can YOU beat it without dying? No, THAT’S a challenge. I almost beat it without dying, but then I screwed up and died once in the last level before the bosses :( So I finished the game with one death, and I didn’t even get the prize for killing everyone because of a bug.

Also, Nikujin has 4 achievements in the main game. These are:

Complete the game without dying
Complete the game without no-one noticing you (enemies are allowed to see you, but you can’t let the question mark appear)
Complete the game and kill every 72 enemies.
Complete the game without no-one noticing and killing everyone (The Ninjamaster prize).

Now, trying to collect THESE is what makes Nikujin REALLY challenging.

"Hakaiman" by oNyx

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:29:09 +0000

See paragraph #2. I already pointed out that 7zip isn’t the reason.

Well, the first version of windows which gets that encoding stuff half right is xp. A possible reason why our 2ks behave differently could be the default codepage (microsoft speak for encoding).

"Hakaiman" by Rz.

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:09:23 +0000

i use 7-zip also :P

"Hakaiman" by oNyx

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:35:24 +0000

SP4 (the latest) here. Hum… maybe the culprit is 7zip (the app I used for extracting). The file name was “é═é®éóâ}âô.exe” instead of “はかいマン.exe”.

Heh. If I rename it to “はかいマン.exe” it still doesn’t work. It then complains that it cannot open “??????.exe” (yes, with question marks in the dialog).

Ah well, must be some random windows screwup. The title bar is also garbled (while the menu is fine). shrug

"Hakaiman" by Rz.

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:09:11 +0000

neither do I

"Hakaiman" by Radix

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 05:57:42 +0000

I didn’t need to rename the exe under win2k. Possibly a service pack fix.

"Hakaiman" by oNyx

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:06:18 +0000

Awesome game. Too bad that there are only 6 levels.

Guards respond to loud noises.

Those which stand still start to move if you punch a nearby wall. Eg in 3-1 you can make the guard walk out by punching the wall on the right (a bit to the left from the spawn point).

Two random things: -grenades won’t leave the screen -grenades break glass and keep their usual trajectory

Oh yea… and non-Japanese Win2k. The game(s) won’t start there unless you rename the exe to something simple (eg “hakaiman.exe” if you’re as creative as I am). Some of those other games also may require that you copy the dll to the same dir as the exe.

"Hakaiman" by oNyx

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:04:24 +0000

Awesome game. Too bad that there are only 6 levels.

Guards respond to loud noises.

Those which stand still start to move if you punch a nearby wall. Eg in 3-1 you can make the guard walk out by punching the wall on the right (a bit to the left from the spawn point).

Two random things: -grenades won’t leave the screen -grenades break glass and keep their usual trajectory

"Hakaiman" by Blueberry_pie

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:03:33 +0000

Holy fudge! I had played (and enjoyed) Bimboman, Teppoman, Teppodon and Nikujin before, but I had no idea he also made this many other games. This site’s going into my bookmarks.

"Hakaiman" by pkt-zer0

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:29:34 +0000

You’re welcome, Derek.

You can actually destroy the turrets with the machinegun, too, it just takes longer and is more dangerous.

Anyhow, Teppodon’s pretty fun. Tetsuhau is also worth a look, as it’s basically Hakaiman v0.5.

"Hakaiman" by Rz.

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:23:48 +0000

thanks for the walkthrough derek, i loved this game but i gave up on it a while ago because i couldn’t figure out how to beat the second level. :(

"Hakaiman" by raigan

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:30:55 +0000

bimboman/teppoman/teppodon were on gamehippo ages ago.. also worth checking out (but not as fun as nikujin/hakaiman)

"Hakaiman" by mr peckerston

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 05:56:00 +0000

axel, CnC Darkside are another Japanese group that uses MMF. They made G-Type and Super Mario XP (both completely amazing) and some other games that I haven’t tried yet.

"Hakaiman" by Derek

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 04:15:13 +0000

Ah, thanks soilworker. I didn’t realize that all the turrets could be destroyed… I guess you have to throw the grenade directly underneath them.

And pkt-zero, I added your translation to the walkthrough. Thanks, mang!

"Hakaiman" by soilworker

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 04:08:01 +0000

Great to see a walkthrough though I completed the game some time ago. Just one hint: you can destroy the turrets by using a grenade. That makes it easier.

"Hakaiman" by DrDerekDoctors

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:08:37 +0000

Oooh, me likey this. Like a gory Gauntlet.

"Hakaiman" by axel

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 02:55:30 +0000

Apparently it’s made in Multimedia Fusion (cncs232.dll = MMF runtime lib). This guy’s probably the first japanese MMF user I’ve ever heard of.

And the game is totally badass. RAWRR!

"Hakaiman" by pkt-zer0

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 02:28:46 +0000

Left coloumn: score, clear time, people killed, times spotted. Right coloumn: remaining lives, emptied magazines, thrown grenades, snacks eaten. Bottom-most: earned wages. Little yellow text should just say “new record”, or something.

"Hakaiman" by Derek

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:34:43 +0000

Ha! Yes, I thought of it, too. ;)

Jon: The second menu option under the first menu lets you put in passwords. Hint hint.

Btw, can anyone translate the winning screen (sorta a spoiler, i guess)? I’m just wondering what these stats are…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigsource/545410829/

"Hakaiman" by PHeMoX

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:24:23 +0000

Eeck! No way 4 hours have passed!

Dang, I guess I just luv those red pixels, aahhh the satisfaction ;) hahahah

"Hakaiman" by PHeMoX

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:35:32 +0000

Lol, at first glance it reminds me of Trigger Happy, definitely am going to try it out! (lol, hint hint ;) hhahaha j/k )

"Hakaiman" by jonathan mak

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:28:01 +0000

i remember finding them in all but the computer room, but i don’t quite remember now. i just know in a couple of the levels it’s moving in the opposite direction of the goal right at the start.

anyway, i just remembered there’s one thing about this game that i never figured out. it’s not in front of me right now so i’m not sure but i think after you beat the game or something, you get a password? i never understood that…

also i was totally addicted to his sniping game and the boxing one (stripped down nanaca crash). couldn’t figure out the “take a crap on everything” game, but it looked like it could be fun.

"Hakaiman" by Derek

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:21:28 +0000

I had only heard of Nikujin until recently. ^_^

The 1-ups are listed in my walkthrough, but now they’re also mentioned in the hints!

But yeah, this guy is great. Definitely belongs in the pantheon of Japanese indie gaming gods. He’s like the Dionysus to Pixel’s Zeus. Or something.

"Hakaiman" by raigan

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:12:54 +0000

i thought everyone knew about this guy!!

i just love how he’s got his own weird-ass style, and that there’s just something really fun about playing the games. just like nikujin totally captures the fun of being a badass ninja, hakaiman captures the fun of being a badass commando.

also, there are secret goals on each level that give you 1ups.. it’s been a while so i forget what they are exactly; i think blowing up a computer is one of them. jon might know..